Wednesday, March 14th 2012
Panel-Maker AUOptronics Convicted of Price-Fixing, Could Face Up To $1B in Fines
One of the biggest suppliers of LCD panels to notebook and PC monitor manufacturers, AUOptronics, has been convicted by a US court on Tuesday, of price-fixing, a serious anti-competitive practice that cripples innovation and is bad for consumers and progress of the industry. The company faces fines as high as US $1 billion, which could amount to a big blow to the company that already finds itself facing losses.
AUOptronics' conviction follows the December 2011 mega-settlement of LCD makers including Samsung, Sharp, Hitachi, HannStar, and Chimei Innolux. At the time, AUOptronics and LG Electronics were the only fence-sitters. LG Electronics agreed to pay a US $400 million fine, in 2008. AUOptronics' current position is that it finds the evidence presented against it, which led to the conviction as being "distorted and incomplete," and that it will appeal against the verdict. The quantum of fine levied against AUOptronics will surface in the months ahead.
Sources:
Reuters, The Verge
AUOptronics' conviction follows the December 2011 mega-settlement of LCD makers including Samsung, Sharp, Hitachi, HannStar, and Chimei Innolux. At the time, AUOptronics and LG Electronics were the only fence-sitters. LG Electronics agreed to pay a US $400 million fine, in 2008. AUOptronics' current position is that it finds the evidence presented against it, which led to the conviction as being "distorted and incomplete," and that it will appeal against the verdict. The quantum of fine levied against AUOptronics will surface in the months ahead.
16 Comments on Panel-Maker AUOptronics Convicted of Price-Fixing, Could Face Up To $1B in Fines
Any higher res than 1366x768 would be better already.
1600x900? 1680x1050?
There are two things I hate about most laptops (the ones a normal person can afford):
- low res 1366x768 screens, even for quite powerful/expensive laptop models
- glare/glossy screens. Who came up with this unusable-in-real-life crap anyways? :banghead:
I think. It's just guesses from my part.
1366x768 is far from unusable, though I agree with the glossy shit making them hard to use outdoors(and sometimes indoors). In fact the 1080p 15" laptops I've had to use were terrible, 1080p on a 15" screen makes everything way to small.
I remember how 5:4 1280x1024 notebooks were mainstream in 2003-04, and 16:10 1440x900 were mainstream, in 2004-06. If in fact the notebook industry was moving on to more dimension-optimized aspect-ratios, 1600x900 should have been the mainstream resolution (sub-$800 notebooks), 1920x1080 should have been "premium" resolution ($800-$1400 notebooks), and 2560x1440 should have been "high-end" resolution (>$1400 notebooks), that didn't happen.
With PCs, things were going excellent, we could buy $250 1920x1200 monitors in 2008-09, then instead of advancing to affordable 2560x1600 screens, the market side-stepped to inferior 1920x1080, with even $500 27" monitors using the same crap 1080p resolution, and only now we're seeing 2560x1440, at prices well over $500. There's clearly a gaping advancement hole in there.
Taken from the comments section:
'To Dell: It's ABSOLUTELY PATHETIC that my circa 2005 Dell Inspiron 6000 15" WUXGA 1900x1200 screen has a higher resolution than your WHOLE current consumer line of laptops in 2012!'
is asking for 4K monitor a little bit to much ???
As long as there isn't more space that has to be illuminated (= bigger panel = longer/more backlight CCFLs or more LEDs), the power consumption isn't really an issue.